Campus Stories - Art & Art History

Stanford Library Blog: Opern-Typen: opera meets the comics
Campus Stories

Stanford Library Blog: Opern-Typen: opera meets the comics

Opern-Tÿpen consists of six volumes of chromolithographic plates depicting scenes from 54 operas popular in 19th century Germany. Each opera plot has been distilled into a mere six frames, with liberally adapted accompanying text. The visual charms of Opern-Typen are evident. The plates reveal a sophisticated understanding of the effective use of line, gesture, and composition…

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Still from the film My Aleppo features a girl facing a gate with a for sale sign
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Stanford alumna wins international award for her thesis documentary about Syrian refugees

Melissa Langer, 2015 MFA graduate of Stanford’s Documentary Film and Video Program, recently won the IDFA Award for Best Student Documentary for her thesis film, My Aleppo. The film, which chronicles the experience of a Syrian refugee family that relocated to Pretoria, South Africa, was one of 15 films in eight categories to win awards in…

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Artist Rick Lowe walking in front of row houses
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Artist Rick Lowe is Stanford Haas Center’s 2016 Distinguished Visitor

Artist and MacArthur Foundation grant recipient Rick Lowe will visit Stanford over winter quarter as this year’s Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor. On Feb. 4, Lowe will deliver the Haas Center for Public Service’s Distinguished Visitor Lecture, titled “Redefining Art in the Social Context.” During his time on campus he will also lead seminars…

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Cantor Arts Center spotlights Richard Diebenkorn’s sketchbooks
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Cantor Arts Center spotlights Richard Diebenkorn’s sketchbooks

For the very first time, the complete sketchbooks of the great American artist Richard Diebenkorn are available to view. The Cantor Arts Center recently launched a new website that gives access to the museum’s collection of 29 sketchbooks by Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), a renowned artist celebrated as both a central figure in the Bay Area…

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Stanford students take listeners on a voyage of discovery
Campus Stories

Stanford students take listeners on a voyage of discovery

While studying “sky burials” in Mongolia, Reade Levinson amassed 20 hours of recordings, including interviews with Tibetan Buddhist lamas, conservation biologists and vulture experts, and the sound of dogs barking, monks praying and cars honking. Levinson, a senior majoring in Earth systems, spent last summer researching the funeral practice, in which monks place corpses –…

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Happy 2016!
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Happy 2016!

With the opening of the McMurtry Building, the new home for the Department of Art & Art History, we reached a milestone in the university’s ongoing commitment to building programs, curricula, and resources in the arts. The new building provides an architecturally exciting and inspiring home for the department, allowing it to expand its programmatic…

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Studio 2
Campus Stories

Studio 2

Two men in a photo studio taking a picture of a Chinese ceramic horse.
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Cantor Arts Center digitizes collection for online database

Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center has completed a 6-year project to make its collection accessible online. Students, faculty, scholars and the general public can now visit the museum’s website, type in a title, artist, theme or other search criteria, and see high-quality digital images of the majority of the 45,000-plus objects in the collection. Partial inventories…

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Front of a modern library in a desert town.
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Stanford photography instructor’s work in national spotlight

ROBERT DAWSON, instructor of photography in the Department of Art & Art History, spent 21 years photographing public libraries across the United States. Now, his photos will get a national spotlight. The Library of Congress recently announced the acquisition of Dawson’s entire archive from the project “Public Library: An American Commons.” The archive, acquired through…

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Storytelling scroll in the conservation lab.
Campus Stories

In the Conservation Lab of Stanford University Libraries, every story has a happy ending

Each story begins with the arrival of a university treasure – a rare book, map, serial or manuscript that needs repair, or a one-of-a-kind object that needs a custom-made box. Like all artisans, Stanford’s conservators have a deep appreciation and respect for precious objects rare to modern, from a first edition On the Origin of…

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Woman handling fishing net artifact.
Campus Stories

New Stanford exhibition highlights power of reinterpretation, consultation with Native American communities

In the late 1890s, the entrepreneur and former lieutenant governor of California, John R. Daggett, assembled an ethnographic collection of objects to illustrate the lives of Hupa, Karuk and Yurok communities in Northern California. Earlier he had served as commissioner for California’s pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where exhibits showcased material…

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[wpbb-if post:acf type="image" name="image" size="thumbnail" display="alt"]Color photo of woman
Campus Stories

“Comma And…”

Last winter quarter, Stanford undergraduate students in any discipline or major were invited to submit new work for the Department of Art & Art History’s second annual undergraduate juried art exhibition titled Comma And… . After much discussion and deliberation, a jury whittled down the selections and made their final recommendations of 27 works from 20 students….

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Side view of Anderson Collection building as seen from the Cantor Arts Center
Campus Stories

Stanford’s Anderson Collection building wins prestigious architecture award

The Anderson Collection at Stanford University has won a 2015 Award of Excellence, the highest level of honor, from the American Institute of Architects, New York State (AIANY). Designed by RICHARD OLCOTT/Ennead Architects, the building housing the collection is located in the heart of Stanford’s arts district. The Anderson Collection at Stanford University celebrates its first anniversary…

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Atrium of art and art history building at Stanford
Campus Stories

New home of the Stanford Department of Art & Art History is an adventure

“Wow” is an apt way to describe the student and community response to the new home of the Department of Art & Art History in Stanford’s arts district. The McMurtry Building was completed over the summer, opening for instruction and art-making on the first day of the fall term. Since then, students have explored 100,000…

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Art history building on the Stanford Campus
Campus Stories

Stanford’s newest building spotlights art and art history

On Oct. 6, Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Steven Denning formally accepted the McMurtry Building for theDepartment of Art & Art History. It is the first new building to open this academic year. The building dedication was one of several celebratory events on Tuesday.   The McMurtry Building at Stanford University, the new home of the Department…

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McMurtry Building for Art & Art History
Campus Stories

McMurtry Building for Art & Art History

Stanford’s McMurtry Building for the arts provides unified facilities for art history, art practice and film programs. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, along with the executive architect, Portland, OR-based Boora Architects, designed not only a new home for the Department of Art and Art History but an interdisciplinary hub for the arts at Stanford that is…

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